Ties
by CaptainKase
Summary: <html><head></head>Al finds out in a hotel room in Xing, sick and silent over the words of a telegram as the delivery boy waits stock-still and smiling for his tip.  But that isn't the first time that he feels it.</html>
1. Chapter 1

**SPOILERS** for the end of Brotherhood and the manga from here on out. Proceed with caution.

**Notes:** Alright. This story began just after I read the ending to the manga - which I hated with a burning, fiery passion, for the record. It started out as a sort of stress relief. I'm not a Winry basher, I don't hate Winry, but I hate Ed/Win. And I hate the way that Ed became a housewife at the end of the manga. I hate the babies. And I absolutely, absolutely _loathe_ that Ed lost his alchemy. You have every right to not agree with me, I don't want anyone getting up on their high horse here, because I don't give a shit either way. I am allowed stress relief. I recognize that it was an alright, appropriate ending, but I am allowed to hate it.

Anyway, this started out as something like a joke, but it's evolved into a really angsty, twisted plot that I've sort of come to enjoy. I think it's half-decent, if the wangstiest piece of trash I've ever written. I like it. If you hated the end of the manga/Brotherhood, perhaps it will be cathartic for you, too. If you didn't, if you just want an alright AU - well, I think it's good for that, too.

I was writing this for FMA Big Bang, but I wanted it done, and I had sort of a difficult time, and I just couldn't get it together in time. I'm mostly posting here, now, for more stress relief. Because the FMA fandom in general has been frustrating me lately, and I want to know that there's some people on my side. I have about 20000 words of this piece done - the end is a bit distant, but it's all planned, and I think it's going to be awesome. Expect more in the future. Feedback would be amazing, given that this is still very much a work in progress.

**Genre:** Angst, Drama, Tragedy

**Pairings/Characters:** Ed/Winry, Roy/Riza, future one-sided Ed/Roy (this isn't what you're thinking, I promise); Alphonse, Pinako

**Warnings:** Character death, not-so-explicit sexual content

Enjoy!

* * *

><p>Al finds out in a hotel room in Xing, sick and silent over the words of a telegram as the delivery boy waits stock-still and smiling for his tip. But that isn't the first time that he <em>feels <em>it. The first time he feels it, he'd been flirting with a cute waitress in sloppy, Amestrian-tilted Xingan. He can remember urging a stop to the tickling sensation at the back of his brain, the tingling sensation in his fingertips, the blue sparks on the top of the table and – the surging wave of anguish that hits him like a fist in the gut.

He has time to think, I was flirting with a waitress and sipping hot and sour soup when this happened. He has time to think, I finished my meal and I paid her a handsome tip and I pet a stray cat on the way home, and I whistled, I actually _fucking_ whistled –

Before he has to go be sick in the hotel toilet.

* * *

><p>Roy finds out in a boring staff meeting. An aide whispers it in his ear like it isn't someone's whole world collapsing in on itself. It feels personal and disgusting to hold it, and it's almost hard to believe that the speaker is still talking with this hanging over him. He doesn't feel it beforehand, no, but he feels it during and afterward, impassive face and burning heart.<p>

He looks out the window and sees a burgeoning world, and he's sick with himself for finishing the staff meeting, but he does it anyway.

* * *

><p>The trip through the desert is more torturous than usual, which <em>is <em>saying something. But the desert is a good place to think. Here, the world comes down to the bobbing head of his guide, swimming in and out of focus with the decadent mirages of water cast in the shadows of the dunes. The glaring sun sends his mind just out of focus enough to think back to that cutting feeling of anguish over hot and sour soup. It's strange that he connected it to the telegram, to his brother in anguish a thousand miles away, but the nature of the hurt had been very distinct. Poignant as an aroma in his mind – _cinnamon, vanilla, sandalwood, misery_ – he knows what it is to feel death. Strangely, unusually, as is consistent with the Elric brothers, he also knows what it means for Ed to feel death.

The first time he had truly grieved was at the death of his mother. His grief had been dull and gradual. It built in strange staccato stairsteps over a period of time. The peak was brief, the descent was long. Alphonse hurt, and he knew to recover. This gave him a standard to compare to for the next major death in their lives, after the Incident – maybe it was Nina or maybe it was Hughes, but in either case it was the same. He didn't feel things the same way, not after their gates merged, and it wasn't something he had properly been able to fathom until he'd spent a sleepless night watching Ed in the throes of some nightmare and had felt his sorrow just _soar_. To an extent, it had been sympathy. But –

Ed felt things deeply and suddenly. Where Al had made a gradual descent down a ravine into despair, Ed dove headfirst off a cliff. The day that they learned Mrs. Hughes was a widow, Al experienced a depth of sorrow that felt a bit like being weighted down at the bottom of a lake, pressure building on top and air escaping. The night that the Colonel burnt a so-called Maria Ross to a so-called crisp, Al had hated more than he ever knew to hate. Hate not just for the Colonel, but for himself. Self-loathing so strong it felt like suicide. His own mentality had kept him grounded, but the very thought that anyone could _feel_ this much left Al horrified in a way he really hadn't remembered –

Until the hot and sour soup. Until the telegram. Al could have drowned in it. But the separation had been evident since the removal of Ed's gate. His joy had been his own, his heart had been his own, his pain had been manageable and tepid. He hadn't felt his brother's love in such a suffocating, magnetic way, and he had been physically able to escape him in a way that hadn't seemed possible since they had run in two different directions in the Resembool fields. He loved Ed. He loved Ed more than there was air in the world, but it was exhausting to share his mind.

But that moment had been a flash to what was, a flash to the earth-shattering quality that Ed's emotions brought forth. It was that more than the telegram that brought him home now, maybe. Because he remembered his mentality, steady and strong-willed. He remembered it keeping him afloat. And it was worrisome to think that – maybe that was what had been keeping Ed afloat, too.

And.

And.

Just how the _hell_ had Ed broken through his gate, anyhow?

* * *

><p>Roy picks up the phone four times. He knows Al is in Xing, a week's journey away from Resembool at least. He knows Ed is alone in a pretty little blue-shuttered house on a hill in Resembool.<p>

He also knows he is a coward.

In one corner of the desk, there is a sweet little blue card with a stork on it. It had been signed by everyone in the office. Edward had told them all that – it was going to be a boy. Winry knew and Granny knew and he knew. It was gonna be a boy. So the card was blue.

He thinks back to a week ago, fond and not-so-fond reminiscing over lunch. Because it was strange to all of these adults – strange, and more than a little bit aging – that a boy they had all but fostered since the age of eleven was having a baby boy of his own. It seemed soon, and it was clear that it hadn't quite been planned, but Edward was twenty-four and they had known him for more than half his life and –

"Does that make us grandparents?" Hawkeye had said, eyes bright and laughing over a file folder.

Outrage. Laughter. Edward had always given these things to them.

But he had given them more, too. And Roy had almost forgotten sorrow until he dumped the card into the wastebasket by his desk.

The phone number remains written in hard, black ink on his desk blotter.

* * *

><p>Al has never seen Ed's new house in person. He'd seen it in photographs plenty of times, sent bickering letters back and forth about its slipshod construction and questionable color schemes. But the house had been a very, very firm step in a new direction for Ed. Once he'd married the love of his life, he'd re-erected a permanent home for himself, a scant few miles from the ashes of the old one. It was symbolic in a way that Ed didn't acknowledge when he wrote Al letters about <em>the specific shade of blue, Al – just like Winry's eyes<em>, but Alphonse was able to recognize that Ed settling was really, finally, the last step of their years-long voyage.

It's at the crest of a hill. There's a sapling in the yard that has all the promise of a tire-swing tree. The shutters _are_ blue – like Winry's eyes. Fresh with new paint. There's even, he notes, a cheerful welcome mat in front of the blue-painted, gold-accented door. The windows are all very dark.

He feels silly standing there. He feels like he shouldn't have to knock at his own brother's house, but at the same time, this is not familiar. True, it holds the person he loves most within, but that does not make it his home. He doesn't know where the bathroom is or the kitchen is or the little yellow-painted nursery is. He doesn't know the furniture – aside from several things they'd received as wedding presents or nursery gifts. For instance, he'd seen the little white crib that Mustang's office staff had collectively given Winry at her baby shower in Central City. It had a blue canopy, yellow stars.

Winry had cried when she hugged Miss Hawkeye. It seems very far away.

He – lifts his hand to knock. There is only Ed that is familiar behind this door, and he's not sure how familiar Ed will be at this point. It's the consequence of coming home following a tragedy. Not being there makes you feel farther from it. He's not sure he'll really realize the truth until he's steeped in it, in this house that Winry and Ed built together.

He almost knocks again, until he hears heavy footfalls from behind the door and steps back to accommodate it opening. There's a moment between when he hears the gentle thrum of fingers – _pa-dum_ – on the doorknob and when he finds himself face down on the not-so-welcome Welcome! mat, where things go a little bit too fast for him to even comprehend. He runs his tongue over the inside of his teeth, feeling their imprints there, and realizes he's been punched. Hard.

There are bare feet in front of his face, and he tracks up the legs that they're attached to before coming to the rapid rise and fall of a bare chest flecked with metal, framed in mussed gold. His brother. Thin and peaky and –

"You _bastard_."  
>A cornflower blue door, hard finality in the <em>pa-dum<em> of the deadbolt lock. Al feels his heartbeat in his cheek.

* * *

><p>Roy fucks Riza that night.<p>

It's something they had a go at after the Promised Day. The first night home, Roy hadn't been able to see. He'd still been thinking about the stone, the implications of using the stone, the way that Edward had turned down the stone with such unwavering strength when faced with losing the person he loved most. Roy hated that he wasn't that strong, because he'd known from the moment Marcoh had offered him an escape from the dark that he would fucking well take it.

It was the guilt and the surreal situation combined with the normalcy of his apartment and his life that had done it. Sex with Riza had always seemed something akin to the feeling of that day. Because Riza was home and Riza was comfortable, but sex with Riza was strange and unexpected and –

It had been the end of the world, and Roy Mustang had fucked Riza Hawkeye. It was as good a time as any.

But tonight it isn't about seeing or not seeing or Riza or Roy, it is – it really is just _fucking_. Happiness is tenuous as the curl of her body and the panting of her breath, as this state of heightened pleasure. But there's nothing tentative or fragile about it, it's hard and heavy, and he doesn't know where the balance is or could be or should be, loving her, treating her like a flower, pounding into her with ruthless abandon until she screams in something like pain and something like pleasure. For Ed, happiness is, had been – _this_. Worry in his eyes when he looks at her, steady as a tree against the wind for her, far away and close to her. Harsh and soft and so in love it looked like the dawn was breaking in his smile every time he looked at her.

And now she's dead. Roy spills into her and on top of her, and he tries not to think of the significance of all this. How this same act of love had turned into hope had turned into death had turned into Ed alone in a blue-shuttered house on a hill in Resembool. No alchemy, no child, no wife.

In the afterward, stripping off a condom, he doesn't say _I love you_.

* * *

><p>Al is left on Ed's doorstep not knowing what to do again when Granny crests the hill with a wicker basket slung over her arm. She looks tired and unsteady, and Al has never been more happy to see her in his life. He skirts down the edge of Ed's river stone path, stumbling into her so hard he almost sends them both off down the hill. She touches his back tentatively at first, then rubs there. It's – strange. Having Granny here. Because their first tie to her had been their mother's friendship with the Rockbells and Winry's friendship with them. And all of the people that tied them together are dead.<p>

That didn't stop him clinging to her in the shadow of his brother's shattered home.

"Have you been to see him yet?" she says, quiet, into his shoulder.

"He punched me and threw me out." She sags. Al is very much not used to having to hold her up.

"The only thing keeping me sane right now is the fact that that boy can't do alchemy."

A twinge of discomfort, of pain. "He wouldn't try again even if he could, Granny. He knows. He knows by now."  
>"Oh? You'd think so. I would too. But it was the first thing he did when he saw her the – the last time. He'd gone in to say goodbye, and maybe it was the fact that their little boy – " And there<em>, Granny<em> lets out a sob, which is just so disconcerting that he doesn't know what to do. But she continues before he can do anything, angry and urgent, "He clapped his godforsaken hands like he'd never known pain from it. And for a moment," a kind of enlightened expression passes over her face then, "I thought the brat had actually done it."

Al pulls back a bit, looks at her old, weathered face, cracks traced in tears, and says, "What?"

"He sort of – glowed. The way he did. The way he used to. And he had both his hands on her belly. And the way the light moved – " Another sob. Harder than she'd ever cried at her son and daughter-in-law's funerals, feeling _this_. She whispered, "It looked like she was breathing."

Alphonse thought back to a crackling at his fingers in a Xingan café.

"I know why you boys thought to do that all those years ago. Because even that moment, where I thought she might be breathing again – "

"Granny… I'm sorry that I wasn't – " Her face changes, and suddenly, that's who she is. Granny. The same stone-faced grandmother who had held her granddaughter's hand through her parents' funeral, who had stopped an eleven-year-old boy from bleeding to death, who had given him a new leg to stand on. Al knows that she won't stop so long as she has people she loves alive, no matter how many others she has to bury.

"No matter. Nothing any of us could have done, no matter what Ed thinks. The placenta ruptured."

_You bastard._

"Winry bled out."

_You bastard._

"The baby died."

You absolute _bastard_.

"Now. Let's go see your brother."

* * *

><p>As they're cooling in their own sweat, resting peacefully on opposite sides of the bed, Riza says, "I should go back to my apartment. It's not an early train tomorrow, but I'll need to pack."<p>

She doesn't move.

"Are you alright, Roy?"

He sits up slowly, swinging his feet from the bed and resting his elbows on his knees. He cups his head in his hands, hides bleary eyes from the sun. They'd never closed the blinds, and Roy is stark naked in the falling dusk. "This is really absurd. The situation is just utterly ridiculous."

"Roy –"

"You know, I couldn't even call him because I don't think I really believed…"

She shifts, and he feels her breasts pressing against his back, her hands making trailing lines across his shoulders. It's almost obscene talking about this with a woman in his bed. If it hadn't been Riza, he wouldn't be. He feels again the strangeness of being able to share touches like this with her before she says, prodding, "…Believed?"

"That anything else this shitty could happen to him. He's a good kid, he's paid his dues. It's just hard to believe that – after all the good he's done, after all the payment. There's still – more."

"I hate to sound insensitive, but I suppose – that's life, Roy."

"And maybe if his had been standard, but he saved – _everyone_. Maybe if he were a tailor and his wife died, and his baby died, you'd say, that's tragic. That's a tragedy. But a hero, who gave everything for his country and his people and never asked – _anything_. _Anything_ in return. Is not meant to watch his wife and child – "

"Roy –"

His voice cracks, "_Die_."

"It didn't just happen _to _him," she says quietly. "Both of those boys, their grandmother lost – their best friend. So smart and so pretty and so talented."

"He did." Roy says. "Love her." Riza nods. Unspoken between them: _It takes a very special sort of person to love and be loved by Edward Elric and all his eccentricities._

"I can still remember her offering me tea when you were in the next room. Way back when he – wasn't himself. She was so polite but so – she was in love with him already. She was upset. I suppose she imagined he would be there forever. She'd already lost her parents by then…" She sniffs if down, hard and dry. There are no tears. "Such a good girl."

There's silence, and Roy raises his head to look blankly at his bookshelf, halfway across the room. "You see that's why I don't –" he swallows past something thick in his throat. "_Those_ are the ones that always get a happily ever after, Riza. Those are the ones that deserve it."

With her head against his back, hair tickling at the nape of his neck, Roy feels the low, rumbling vibrations when she asks, "…What about the ones like _you_?"

And Roy is afraid to even think about that.

* * *

><p>Al begs off being punched in the face again in a series of vague hand gestures and mumbled excuses. Granny looks disappointed, but tells him that the door to the Rockbell house is open, as always, and he takes off running down the hill. His ears ring and his throat hurts, and he tries to remember hot and sour soup.<p>

He can read more into the chilling emotions of that day now, and tiny threads of realization keep weaving in. His own grief for his best friend also weave in, and he tries to separate the very different threads of their emotions, but it's like picking apart a tapestry.

He thinks. Sparks at his fingertips, tickling at the back of his mind and – Ed hadn't just been at his gate. It wasn't just Ed's emotions trickling through. It had been – a full-fledged attempt to use Al's gate.

Al skids to a stop near the river, still a ways from Granny's (_Winry's house, mom, we're going over to play –) _house, panting and clutching at his chest. Ed had never seemed to openly, seriously regret his decision to give up alchemy. Sometimes, drawing an array for Al to use, he eyes got a bit distant and he looked a bit wistful but – Al truly believes in their new principle of equivalent exchange. Ed had given up so much but – a flash of a memory, back to the sensationless void of their two gates – he had gained more. He assured them, he had gained more.

Ling is the emperor of Xing now. Roy Mustang is a visionary, a decorated General in line for the Fuhrership. Hawkeye and Armstrong and Breda and Fuery and Falman are with him, learning the new world, feeling themselves out, starting new lives. Havoc is walking. Mei is beautiful and smart. Marcoh and Scar and Miles are reforming the country. And – Al is a happy, restless traveler. The friends that Edward cited at the gate as – the people that allowed him to give up his alchemy with confidence. They're all happy. But they are all happy in separate corners of the world. He had been able to give up a huge piece of himself for the sake of all of them, firm in the knowledge that they would all be there for him when he failed or faltered or –

A very definitive emotion, Al remembers, had plummeted his heart as it'd pushed through his gate – a disgraceful, inexcusable, miserable thread of…loneliness.

Al tries to imagine – Ed without alchemy and without friends, alone in a house that's running with Winry's blood. Al's knees go weak under him, as his mind goes back to the uncomfortable places that it had strayed to sometimes during sleepless nights. When he had appeared in the mutilated body of their not-mother, and he had seen Ed alone and bleeding to death in the basement of their old house. Then, he had been desperate enough to resort to the alchemy that had saved Al's life. And thinking back – maybe it was the loneliness that did it again.

He imagines – a faceless doctor wiping his hands of blood and Granny grief-stricken in the shadows of the door. Ed quiet and pale and hovering over his wife and his love and his best friend and –

Ed bleeding to death and alone and staring at the shapeless piles of Alphonse's clothing and –

Clap. No alchemy. But Ed's resourcefulness knew no bounds, and he had pushed himself through, pushed the ethereal heaviness of Al's door with sheer force of will and solitude.

Al can remember shaking his head, and closing the door himself. It had been such a mild annoyance, a gnat flying in the periphery of his vision, a fly buzzing on the wall, the drone of engines in a Central street – his only brother's last ditch efforts to save his dying wife.

(_I win Ed, I get to marry Winry –_)

To save Al's best friend. Since as far back as he can remember.

_You bastard_.

Al finally falls, hard, at the base of a tree, and wonders who exactly he failed worse.

He lingers there for a moment trying to restructure his thoughts into some order that won't hurt him every time he thinks them. When he finds it in him to get up again, he walks briskly home, fiercely determined, and tries not to feel anything. It takes some doing to cut off the periphery of his vision, because it seems like every corner of this countryside holds some phantom of his childhood. He'd known that pain with his mother when annual town festivals came around – carnivals, dances. Hell, Alphonse even remembered their father sometimes, when the house had still been standing. His shadow, his smell, his hands on his back on the old tree swing…

They never changed, small towns didn't. Not really. And it's good, usually, but not after you've lost someone.

Trees grow taller, people get older and die. But it's all the same. Really.

Case and point: the old Rockbell house. Al slows his pace to let his hand skim the old red-painted sign, _Rockbell Automail_, reverently, and he's almost glad Den had died a few years back, because it might be too much to see that old dog limping around the side of the house and expecting Winry home again.

He remembers how upset she had been. They'd buried the old girl in the back yard. Winry had quietly thanked the little pile of turned earth for being there every time Ed and Al hadn't, and Ed had whispered awkward nothings about wishing he could transmute a grave marker for her. Alphonse hadn't done the honor. He figured it was wrong to take that sort of comfort he wanted to give to Winry and shove the ability his brother had allowed him in his face all at the same time.

His legs give out again when he reaches the inside of the house. Just at entryway, amidst the bloodstains that his brother had left there over ten years ago, before the table where Winry had sat crying, afraid, longing for her mother and father.

Alphonse doesn't know how to reconcile the things he's feeling. His mind flashes between the past and the present and Ed and Winry and – himself. And it's too much to have failed Ed and left him alone, to have failed Winry and let her her die, to have failed the new and fragile life that hadn't been his to fail at all. Too much at the same time to be suffering and to see Ed suffering and to be without the one person that he needs most of all. Deservedly, rightfully without.

The phone sits innocuous in the corner, like it hadn't played some part in this heinous crime either, like it hadn't been the first one to tell him and build him up to be hurt again, crackling static over desert sand – "_Pregnant, Al, she's – well no, we didn't plan on it but I'm. Gonna be a dad Al, this is what we always dreamed of. New life. It's – awesome."_

He gets to his knees in the entryway (_Please, help him – he's gonna _bleed _to death_), puts his hand on the back of a chair to balance himself (_You have to take your time, Ed, your leg is gonna fall off if you work it too hard)_, and finds his feet again (_Don't worry Al, you'll get it. It must be hard with no feedback, even automail has a little bit –)_. The trip to the phone is slow (_Two good legs –_) and filled with hesitation (_- get up -) _and he doesn't know quite what he means to do when he gets there (- _use them_).

He needs help.

(_You could become a State Alchemist. Regain what you've lost._)

He dials.

* * *

><p>"General Mustang."<p>

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

"Alphonse."

Breathe, breathe, break.

"_Please._"

* * *

><p>Feedback very much appreciated.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

And then, out of nowhere, an update.

Stressed, stressed, stressed from finals. While procrastinating my Lit Theory studying, I remembered that this fic exists, and I started writing more on it. These 6000 or so words have existed for a very long time, but now there are just about a thousand new ones, and I thought, since I'm making progress, I'll just go ahead and throw these up. I think I meant to do it a long time ago, but...school. Eep.

The same warnings still apply. Character death, bitter I-hated-the-end-of-Brotherhood/manga-with-a-fiery-passion catharsis. Depressing as all hell. The next update will hopefully be (a liiiiiiiittle bit) happier, but who knows when that will be. I'm meant to be thesising, sheeeeesh.

**Enjoy!  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Roy hadn't planned to accompany Hawkeye to Resembool. He had planned to pay his respects to a bottle of whiskey instead. It would demand much less of him than a grave marker and a dozen tear-stained faces, and he doesn't know that he feels strong enough to face all that. But nevertheless, he finds himself on the noon train to Resembool the next day, sitting by Riza and, hands twitching restlessly, fruitlessly at his sides – trying to figure out if he wants to touch her.<p>

Alphonse's voice floats unbidden on the edge of his consciousness, rolling sobs with the rhythm of the train. It had been impossible to understand fully, but it had been enough to tell him he was needed, and that had been enough to drive him to buy a ticket.

The funeral service will be tomorrow, and Roy wonders absently, watching the scenery go by, if there will be a second coffin for the baby. He doesn't know how long it had really been alive, if it had been alive at all, if it had been stillborn or if it had come out crippled and weak and rasping and underdeveloped –

It – _he_ must have a second grave, mustn't he? He wasn't certain at what point a person becomes a person, or became worthy of a dingy stone with its name on it. Hell, Roy wasn't even sure he'd earned his own name in marble yet.

He knows the baby hadn't been much more than a bump in Winry's stomach (a tool in an innocent woman's demise, a murder weapon) but he feels very real to Roy, for some reason.

And maybe it's because – in Roy's mind, the baby always has Edward's face. Younger and plumper, more like it had been when he'd first met the boy, eleven years old and still clinging to his baby fat. And maybe it's because he can't picture Winry Rockbell well enough to grace it with her features. They'd met very early in her life, it's true, and they'd met at the wedding very briefly. But she had just been a graceful buoy afloat in a sea of congratulations, and she had not paid him very much heed before moving on to the next well-wisher.

He is able to recall – ah, she'd been very beautiful, just as Riza had said. But the baby still looks just like Edward. He has blond hair and a wide face. Edward's high cheekbones and strong jaw. Edward's long, defined nose and dark, thick eyelashes. Edward's ghastly pale face, burned and marred, choking on death and something from a nightmare as it's buried –

"We're nearly there."

He shakes himself into awareness. The countryside has gone more pastoral outside. The structures are fewer and farther between, and they blur green with the lushness of the surroundings. The sun is setting in the west, and this time last night he'd been inside of her. Now he can't bring himself to put his arm around her shoulders.

His arms twitch, and they're full of blood.

* * *

><p>He's quite certain that no one sleeps the night before the funeral. Granny Pinako wanders home eventually, mumbling, looking stricken, her face set with the stony determination of a woman who has lost far too much. She sits him down underneath the swinging overhead light in the living room and explains, as if to make sure that Al will be able to take it when confronted with it in the morning, that Ed is not himself.<p>

Al laughs hollowly. That is likely the understatement of the century. Because he hadn't seen his face long before he'd slammed the door shut, but his brother's eyes had held something he'd never even imagined he'd see there again – intent, maybe. There wasn't emptiness there, but a decisive lack of it that was far more worrisome. He'd tried to enter Al's mind once, he'd seen how easily Al had fended him off. What other plans could Edward possibly have?

"—I think he's sleeping in the study. Alphonse? Did you hear what I said?"

No. He'd been busy trying to erect mental sentries somewhere, trying to remember dreams he'd had, trying to comprehend, abject terror ringing in his ears, if his defenses would go down if he slept. Could he always wave his brother off that self-destructive path so easily? It felt like failure, keeping his brother out, but it hadn't yet occurred to him then, when he'd been tossed aside, that maybe it was a victory, and maybe he hadn't killed Winry but he had saved Ed.

Ed wouldn't see it that way though. Not in a million years.

"No. No, say it again Granny?"

"I said, their bedroom was going to be the birthing room. I mean I took the sheets away of course, but the mattress must just be – stained. He's put a bookcase in front of the door, but I tried to tell him to just come stay here for God's sake. He's driving himself crazy in that house.

"And then of course there's the nursery…"

Alphonse feels his eyes growing wider through the exchange, and by the time she mentions the nursery he knows his eyes might as well be coming out of his head. "_That__'__s _where it happened? And you're _letting __him __stay __there_? Alone!" He says it like he hadn't left Edward himself earlier.

Her lips tighten dourly, and she taps an unlit pipe against the table. "Do you honestly think he gave me any choice?" It comes out in a quick, harsh whisper. Like she knows that she's wrong and she knows that there's nothing she can do about it. "He's been there since it happened."

"…Did you…?"

"I stayed with him the first couple of nights. He walked the house like a ghost."

"Granny…"

She sighs, "There must be something between you two. He didn't ask for you, even early on, and you couldn't stay with him. So, he's alone in the house where they died. Just for tonight though, he can give us our own night of mourning." Her voice had devolved into something shaky and raspy with age over the past few years. But he knew it wasn't his imagination that – it was wavering a bit more now.

"Do you think he'll come to the funeral tomorrow?"

"I imagine it will be like your mother's funeral."

Color bright memories casting long shadows – Ed being sullenly fitted for a dull, muted, confining suit as Al tugged his collar and baked in the slanted sun. Ed scaring away condolences with an acid tongue. Ed throwing tantrums over – oh, small things, stupid things, getting angry even as Winry and Al cried. Ed stomping his little suit into the ground. Ed transmuting and transmuting and transmuting little trinkets, little rings of flowers for her grave, until he was so tired he drowsed over his transmutation circle and Winry and Al had to help him to bed.

Ed never crying, never condoning any funeral, because, as Al had discovered, he never intended to see her stay dead.

She says, "We'll have to pick him up in the morning. We'll have to go early. He won't likely be dressed."

She says, "It's late. Time for bed, then."

She says, "Hell." And gets up.

He sees her wander off, vaguely, at the edge of his vision. She walks slumped through the swinging door that leads to the hallway, gone into the sprawling abyss of a house that's far too large for her. Al remains seated in the uncomfortable hardness of the chair under the swinging lamp. He is hyperaware of the chafing of travel-worn clothes on his skin. He can feel the grime gathered in the hollows of his collarbone and the insides of his elbows. He concentrates on it, makes himself uncomfortable and awake, and closes his eyes.

He can't tangibly feel the passages of his mind in the same way that he can feel the things outside himself, but he tries to trace them anyway, tries to reinforce them in the same way he might board windows and doors against a natural disaster. He has not done much for Ed since he lost so much, but this. This he can do. Even though keeping Ed alive may be the last thing Ed really wants right now.

Pinako will find him there in the morning, a specter of the giant he once was that first night, awake and trapped inside a hollow shell.

* * *

><p>If death makes Roy scared and desolate and weak, if it makes him draw away, it just seems to have the opposite effect on Hawkeye. He should have suspected when she booked them a single room for the night – because they were very close, but not close enough for this to be regular – but he had been simply too tired to fight it. A draining train ride and the prospect of a funeral bright and early in the morning tugs at him as he climbs the stairs, and by the time they've unlocked the door he is ready to collapse onto the bed fully clothed. But before he could make his way there –<p>

"Need you," Riza says, tightly.

He winces, eyes the musty bed longingly. She tugs at one of his buttons with one hand and triumphantly fishes a condom from her pocket with the other. He analyzes the situation, remembers the night before, and tries to dredge up some semblance of arousal for her. It isn't to be. When she tries to kiss him, he pulls swiftly back.

" –Roy?" she says, confused but not hurt.

He sighs. "I'm very tired."

"Oh." She drops her hands to smooth them roughly over her rumpled countenance. Hawkeye is not one to really put herself out there sexually, and he imagines she's only done this because she had figured Roy would reciprocate. It has to be some sort of blow, but considering the circumstances, he can't imagine she'll be too upset. And he honestly can't say that he'll really appreciate it if she has a sudden change in character now, when he needs consistency more than anything. She doesn't disappoint though, and she slips quietly back into the shaky role of subordinate. It's almost sad that there's little to no inbetween today, that he'll be sharing his bed with his Colonel, but if that's what it has to be for them both to come out of this crisis unscathed, so be it.

He slips into the bathroom to change. It seems ridiculous, and it is ridiculous, but he doesn't know how else to handle this. When he goes back into the main room, she's sitting on the bed, facing the bathroom door, swathed in big, roomy blue pajamas. Roy recognizes them as his own, a pair she probably took from his home at his behest, and with her legs tucked up under her and her hands nearly hidden in the sleeves, she looks – diminished, somehow.

She says, "Have you ever thought about being a father, Roy?"

Roy's mind flashes to Fullmetal, face cracking as he is hefted from a wheelchair and the breaking feeling that had produced in Roy for the very first time.

He says, "Yes." And he leaves it to her to understand the implications.

She says, "I brought condoms." Like that is the problem.

"I'm just tired, Riza."

She climbs into the left side of the bed, the side closest to the door, like maybe she's thinking about bolting. That is normally Roy's side at home; he hates having his back to the mirror when he's spooning with her because they make a very pretty picture together.

"I'm sorry, Roy. I honestly don't know what's come over me."

"Biological imperative," he says, settling down on the right side of the bed and facing her lurid outline in the dark. She sighs in the same way Hughes used to when he'd been complaining of Roy's science-oriented brain. They are as far apart on the bed as they can possibly be.

"It isn't as simple as all that," she says. "It can never just be that."

It can never be just fucking until we make more babies to replace the one they lost, to replace the woman that's dead, because she and he makes we, and that is very different from the we that Ed and Winry make together. Made together.

"No," he says, drawing a blanket in tighter to himself. "I don't suppose it can."

"It's hard being here, in the same town, and not being with him. Isn't it? For you?"

No. Damn it all if it wasn't as hard as it should have been. Something inside Roy curls up tight like it's rotting, crumpling along the edges. He just grunts in reply.

Feeling Riza quivering against the mattress, seeing her silhouetted eyes close in some sort of defeat, is enough to remind him of how selfish he's being. He's failed her, and to a far greater extent, he knows that he's failed Edward.

Roy turns away from Riza, belly roiling with his shame and cowardice. With his face toward the window and the vast, open landscapes, he can't help but be reminded of the only other ceremony he'd ever attended in this town.

Their wedding had been beautiful, though his memories of it are tinted dark, now. Her beautiful white dress and white smile are foggy gray. Edward's tuxedo is sullied dark and dirty. One of his treasured keepsakes, proud on his desk in Central, is a photograph of them, together, then. It seems gaudy and bright when he thinks about it in the moon-touched darkness of this room, but it comes to him easy and unbidden. In the picture, they're standing in front of the wedding cake, about to take the first dance, and they are focused so wholly on each other, entangled so completely with one another – that Roy, abruptly, can't fathom what it means for her to be six feet underground and that far away from him now.

And looking back on it, receiving that picture (in a clumsy thank you note, Roy thought with a pang – Winry had written, Ed had signed) had begun his era of indolence and neglect, had kindled in him a very specific brand of flushed arrogance, and it had felt very good indeed to know that Winry was there – ah – picking up where Roy's own office had left off.

He can't understand how that picture can exist, how that wedding could have happened, and how he can be here for a funeral that he has no idea how to deal with.

Passing the torch had obviously made him immature, weak, soft, unprepared. Winry is dead and Ed needs help and he feels like he doesn't know how to love anymore.

Riza's question rises in haunting mockery. His mind twists her words into something sarcastic and sick, and he thinks –

_Have __I __ever __thought __about __being __a __father?_

Yes, once, to two young boys who made me very proud.

Never again, though.

* * *

><p>They can't find Ed at first. Granny seems surprised that the whole first floor is empty, and Al takes the searching as an opportunity to scope out the life that Ed and Winry shared here. Al can tell that it had been quite tidy, once.<p>

The main room on the first floor is a living room, cozy and small, with a big, plump, baby blue sofa and little matching loveseat. The loveseat looks a bit worn, but distantly. Two flat imprints that might have held living bodies, once. Behind the loveseat is a fireplace with dark brick that distinctly screams of Ed. The grating covering the hearth is a bit of both of them, dark metal lacing intricately together. Near the edge of the hearth there's a broken vase.

And the vase begins Al's long mental inventory of broken belongings, all scattered across the floor and scraping at the lacquer of the hardwood floors. Through to the kitchen, there's a cookie jar that might have been a rooster, once. There's a breeze blowing through a series of broken windowpanes. At the base of the floorboards, just near the molding, there are dozens of clear foot-shaped imprints punching through the drywall. Some go deeper than others, some inflict the cupboards, and there's even one that's dented the metal of the oven in a pattern that looks suspiciously like toes but – they have all clearly been made with a left foot. Al follows a trail of flatware strewn amid splintered remnants of a stomped-on drawer straight to –

A door at the end of the kitchen. Immaculate, untouched. He reaches out a hand, and he's nearly to the handle when Granny says, "Don't," very quietly.

"Granny?"

"Her workshop."

Al quickly draws back and turns around to face her.

"Was it like this when you –?"

"Left last night? No. This," she makes a sweeping gesture and toes a bent spoon, "is new."

"Oh, Ed…" Al says, throat cracking. Al hadn't slept last night, no, but it is clear that Edward hadn't either. He'd been awake, doing this, tormenting himself in the wreckage of a broken home, and – oh hell, Al is the worst person in the world.

"The only door on the first floor we've yet to open is – his study." She points away from the kitchen, to a doorway on the far side of the living room, and Al walks back, eyeing the dark wooden door. Ed must have upturned several potted plants the night before, because potting soil litters the tile of the entryway. But it is disturbed, a big sweeping swathe is clear where a door might have opened right into it. The hardwood beneath it is irreparably scuffed. "He'll be in there," she says. "He won't be upstairs."

The tension in the room heightens abruptly, in some sort of sick anticipation, and just as Al's about to put his hand on the knob, the door explodes outward, and Ed emerges.

All Al can think is that he looks awful. Greasy hair and wild eyes and twitching fingers. He gives Al a wild-eyed once-over and abruptly steps around him. But there's none of the easy grace there that Al's familiar with. Rather, he falters on his prosthetic leg, and stumbles toward the kitchen. He's slow enough that Al is able to, unthinkingly, catch him by the arm. It must disturb his balance, because he's snarling as he falls down, and Al is left hunched, holding someone spitting with fury and nearly unrecognizable by the sleeve.

"Fuck off, Al," he says, tugging halfheartedly. Al tightens his grip and tugs back. He has no idea what to say.

"Edward," Pinako whispers. "It's her funeral today. We're here to get you."

He stares at the ground between his splayed legs. He's wearing a filthy pair of house pants, and the cuff creeps up his automail leg. Al finds his eyes wandering, creeping, and that seems like private territory too, because Ed catches him at it and uses his other leg to cover it, pull at his pants with wriggling toes. He shoots Al a dirty look.

"Was gonna get ready," he says. "Was gonna go."

Al doesn't believe it for an instant, and he can tell from Pinako's pinched expression that she doesn't either.

"Can you go get washed up, then?" she asks quietly. Cautiously. There's a half-bathroom near Ed's office, but the only showers in the house must be upstairs, and it's clear Ed hasn't been there in quite some time. "We can go back to my house if you're not – "

"Stop it, I can shower in my own goddamn house. This is my house," he says a little desperately.

They all just sit there, then. It's like no one quite knows how to tell Ed to get on with it, because it's too much like telling him to just move on. It seems impossible, but they could all do with a little bit of normality.

Pinako says, "Don't make me have to baby you, Edward. You're not ten years old anymore. Get up, then."

Ed shoots a sullen glance at Al before nodding sulkily at Pinako and jerking his sleeve out of his little brother's hold. Then he goes through the – far too complicated motions of getting up. And that's when it becomes clear why he had fallen so quickly before.

"Brother, what's wrong with your leg?"

Honestly, Al should have known better than to ask.

"There's nothing wrong with it! Why would there be anything wrong with it, she fixed it. She fixed it just a couple of weeks ago, it's fine. Just shut up, fuck off, you don't know anything about it."

He has to manually bend the knee to get it under him in order to be able to stand up at all, and something in the knee makes a strange whooshing sound every time he puts weight on it again. He starts for the stairs, but Al can't imagine how he'll take them like this.

Pinako says, "Ed, your suspension is off. I can hear it."

Ed doesn't respond. He just doggedly drags his leg toward the staircase. They hadn't counted on this.

"Edward," she says. "There's no way we'll be able to walk there with you moving so slow."

Ed sets his face, takes the first step.

Al looks at Pinako, and knows what she's thinking. It would be so, so easy to crack open the door to Winry's workshop. And then they'd have all the tools to fix him. But maybe it wasn't as easy as just that.

Ed takes the second step, and his fierce determination has fallen into something tired. Just tired.

"Alphonse, call the Fosters. They're heading the cemetery, and they should have a horse and cart. They can pick us up here."

Ed takes the third step, slowly. Quietly.

"But Granny –"

"Tell them that we'll meet them outside in thirty minutes."

On the fourth step, Ed's lips tighten visibly, like he's trying to keep them from shaking. Al goes to the kitchen to use a little white phone with a well-worn dial as Granny mounts those bottom steps easily and offers her hand to Ed.

He does call the Fosters. They're only taking the cart to the cemetery because Nellie is so pregnant, he says, a bit distantly. He says he'll be pleased to see Alphonse again, agrees to take them all, and hangs up. The conversation had been so short and succinct that there hadn't been much opportunity for sympathy, but it was clear that they both felt the profound sense of loss, and it was clear that they both maintained an upspoken boon of pity for Ed's plight. Until that point, Winry's death had seemed very close to him, very personal, very much the Elric family's tragedy. But he can see how much her death is hanging over the entire town of Resembool, and he knows how much she will be missed.

By the time he's done, Ed's in the shower upstairs. He can hear Granny coaching him from the bottom of the stairwell, making sure he's washing behind his ears, making sure he isn't slipping on the slick tile. He's reverted to something childlike and dependent, willing to be guided through a bath by his surrogate grandmother, and it's so - insane. Because this is his brother, who had been so fiercely independent from the tender age of eleven, and it just doesn't make any sense.

Al starts up the stairs. Unbidden, images from a life he had never known himself flash before him. Mostly simple things, like Winry carrying a laundry basket up the stairs, or Ed bounding down them and catching Winry at the bottom for a kiss. He knew what kind of relationship they shared. It had been sweet, passionate. Ed fumbled around affection, but Al likes to imagine that here, in his home, he is more calm and easy about it. He can see them just embracing on the landing at the top of the stairs. He can see the dark sheen of Ed's ponytail, the light waves of Winry's, as their heads come together, chaste and beautiful.

He tries to imagine how Ed would have reacted to Winry being pregnant, and he's aware that Ed would have treated her like glass. From his vantage at the top of the stairs, finally, he can see a wavering-thin specter of his brother helping a big-bellied Winry down the steps. Maybe it had happened, maybe it hadn't. Whether or not it had, it would never happen now.

Al can see the bathroom at the end of the hall – steam is billowing out, Ed is grousing, and Pinako is clearly a bit too close for comfort now. At the other end of the hall, there's a bookcase blocking the entrance to a bedroom with a white door and a shining metal knob. Just next to it, there's another door, closed tightly. There's an indentation in the carpet where the bookcase might have been just a little while ago. Al looks back toward the steam-soaked bathroom, back toward the bookcase, and he's consumed by this insatiable curiosity that has consumed him since first entering this unfamiliar place.

He knows it's their bedroom, and he imagines his brother having sex with his oldest friend. Ed bumbled around with his love, yes, but – they did have sex. They must have. They loved each other, and they did have sex. Here, in this house, where they lived together. Maybe up against this wall, maybe in the shower where Ed is now, maybe on the well-worn loveseat downstairs. He can see it, breaking and tender and steady and everything that sex was supposed to be because they did. They did love each other. Al shoves the bookcase just enough to get at the door, and he opens it without really knowing what to expect.

There's a dark brown stain on the mattress. Just in the very center. Big and circular and spreading and uneven and – they had sex here, certainly. Maybe this was where they'd conceived their child.

Al shakes his head frantically to rid himself of those thoughts – he tries to dissociate the sex act from Winry's death then, because if he thinks of it in those terms then romance will be dead for him forever. But it is a sad association that he must make, that their strong and steady love had led to – this. A dark-edged stain of Winry's life on their marital bed. Al thinks abruptly of every girl in Xing he'd fucked, every girl that meant a thousand times less to him than Winry ever had to Ed, and he can almost – feel them going cold on top of him.

This couldn't be all there is to love. Friendship and courtship and marriage and fucking and death, and then it's over and then all that's left is a brown stain in the center of a bed that you'll never have the strength to sleep on again.

And then Ed's behind him, dripping with water and malice.

"Who the fuck said you could come in here?"

Al whirls on him and feels like he's been struck. Ed's thin, clothed only in a towel around his waist, and smells like flowery shampoo. His expression is as cold as the steel that remains embedded in his shoulder even now.

"Ed I just – thought I'd get you some clothes."

Pinako says, "Stop being so cross, Edward," and let's herself in behind him. Ed still bristles with that harsh anger, breathing unsteadily out of his nose in a very audible way. But all of the sudden, his eyes on Al go unfocussed, finding something behind Al, and Al already knows what it is. Ed's face breaks with emotion.

Al raises a hand as Pinako pulls black clothes from the closet. There's a pair well-worn black leather trousers in one of her hands, and her knuckles on it are white.

"Do you even have a black suit, Ed?"

Ed's eyes focus on the bed, and now his breath has started hitching with every stuttering little intake. Al takes him by the arm, and does the first good thing he'd done for his brother for a very long time – he guides him forcefully out of the room.

"We'll be in the hall, Granny."

She grants them a pained backward glance as she tosses the leather trousers to the floor with a slap, like this room holds painful memories for her too, and Ed quietly allows himself to be steered to safety. He focuses on the wallpaper over Al's shoulder – blue – and the vase of dead flowers on top of another bookcase.

"Brother," Al tries, softly.

When Ed speaks, it's so very quiet, Al almost can't hear. "What gives you the right?"

Al can't help but to think about that for a moment. Red-stained mattress and photographs – private lives, private deaths. It hadn't always been this way between them, and Al wonders when exactly it was they had started keeping secrets.

"She was – my best friend, Ed."

Ed snarls, "Well maybe you shouldn't've left her to die then, _Al_!" Ed's face is dark and shadowed with shame, and it's clear that he doesn't want to be putting this on Al, and it's clear that he doesn't entirely. Indeed, in that moment, they share a sense of knowing. Knowing that if Ed had been able to use alchemy, he would've given his soul for her – would've given his soul for his child. But they both also know that Ed gave his alchemy for Al all those years ago. Al can't help but think, _you __said __you__'__d __be __okay._ It's not fair that he's making Al to blame now, because he said he'd be _okay,_ and Al had believed him. He'd always, always believed his big brother. But now Ed's diminished and hurt and very clearly not okay, and it's not fair for Ed to blame him for this.

But he doesn't. Al knows him too well to think that he blames Al for this. He blames himself, of course. How far back does that hatred reach? To the moment of death in the room behind him, the moment where Al had denied him access to a power source he had claimed so easily before? To the moment of conception – on the couch or on the bed or in hallowed realms of Winry's workshop? To the moment that he married her, that he fell in love with her, that he really started to notice the way she smiled and the way she laughed?

Or.

_To __the __moment __when __he __brought __me __back,_ Al thought. Looking at Ed, thinking he may be thinking that – if distantly, if unintentionally – was one of the hardest things that Al ever had to do.

Ed says, "I…shouldn't've…"

And he never says what he shouldn't've done. But Al thinks maybe it's everything.

"Your suit, Ed. It might be a bit snug, but…" Pinako says coming around the corner.

Ed looks at her like he can't even fathom being here, like he doesn't even know where he is. He takes the suit with hands that are trembling, fingering the buttons like his hands are numb.

Al's stomach feels tied in knots, and he knows Ed's pain very acutely in that moment. Because he had been so closely connected to Ed for so very long, and he knows the depth of his feeling for everything, yes. And he knows now how deep the regret could potentially go, and he hates that Ed is likely regretting every happy moment he's had in this house – because what was it but another nail in her coffin, after all? And maybe he was regretting every happy moment he'd ever had with Al too, because that was incriminating now. Every human smile, every flash of teeth, every sigh and snort and laugh wasn't just that anymore. It was something that meant he couldn't save someone else he loved.

Al watches as Pinako coaches him through the motions of putting on his suit. He kneels to let her button his buttons, and while he's crouching, she runs tender fingers through his bangs, straightening them. They share a moment of quiet pain there, face to face. He breathes heavy and wet, and she looks like she's on the verge of breaking. Al hurts, hurts as much as he never imagined he could again, but he doesn't hurt like them. Maybe it's because he didn't have to watch her live harder than she ever had, blaze and glow, right before she died.

And then Al can almost see a quiet analysis of every little step that he had taken during her pregnancy brewing behind Ed's eyes. Was this the misstep that killed the baby? Should I not have gone on that trip to Central? Should I have stayed?

Al wants to say, _No, __no __Ed. __It__'__s __not __your __fault, __it __was __never __your __fault._

It's something that he had been able to say with absolute confidence at one point in his life, sitting across the room from Ed fever-ridden and desolate, because he had been there to know.

But now, more than anything, maybe the problem is that he'd never been there. He'd been in Xing, learning alkahestry and staging some sort of rebellion. His brother had settled with a quiet sort of dignity, but Al had very much wanted to keep adventuring –

And how could that be wrong?

But it meant that he missed out on that moment on the stairs, or that quiet kiss by the door, or heart-breaking little smile that he had (might have?) given her. He realizes with a twinge that he can't really remember the precise curvature of her smile, or the exact blue of her eyes. He'll never know if pregnancy made her truly glow. He'd neglected this household and his brother, and no wonder they weren't a family of shared secrets anymore. He's a stranger to his brother's life in this house, yes, but he's also a stranger to the man his brother has become here, just as his brother doesn't know what exactly Al has done in Xing or what kind of restless, hedonistic, escapist soul he's apparently turned into.

And. He doesn't know who Winry is. Was. Had been. Had their relationship changed them? Had sharing a home and a life made them different people? Was he her best friend at all anymore?

Pinako deftly folds Ed's black satin tie, and his lips quiver again. Ed is certainly a different person now, sullen and silent and sad. He'd missed that transition too, sitting on a camel and lamenting the heat. Ed is like a child now. He is so different from how he has ever been, and how had Alphonse missed him becoming this? How does he soothe this when he doesn't know its origins?

What is he meant to say in the face of this? _I __don__'__t __know __if __it __was __your __fault, __really, __Ed. __I __was __fucking __around __in __Xing, __and __I__'__ll __never __know __how __you __loved __her. __She__'__s __dead __now, __though, __so __can __you __and __I __start __over?_

In his too-small suit, his shoulders are so broad it looks as if the seam running down his spine is going to burst out. He looks as sturdy as a mountain, and he shakes.

_Hello. I'm Alphonse._

"Granny. I don't want to go, I wasn't going to go," he says quietly, abruptly, like a sulking child. But it's not an admission like it should be, which says he doesn't think it's cowardice. It's just a way of the world now, it's just something that is. Something that had _become_ when Al wasn't looking. "I don't know if I can. I don't think I can."

_And you are…?_

* * *

><p>Feedback very much appreciated.<p> 


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